


Worlds Colliding

by sugarandspace



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Falling In Love, Fluff, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mortality, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 00:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20416763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarandspace/pseuds/sugarandspace
Summary: He grew used to the variance of his seasons.The over-the-moon happiness of spring, summer, and fall, and the crippling sadness that was brought on by winter that isolated him from the one he loved.But he kept telling himself that as long as he got those nine months of love and joy, he’d brave through the three months of longing.Magnus' village is dying and he goes to the merpeople for help. He didn't expect for the tale to have any truth to it, even less that he'd find a lifelong companion under the waves.





	Worlds Colliding

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be my ficlet for this week's ficletinstruments but I fell in love with the prompt and suddenly it was over 2000 words. I'll figure out a new story for the challenge. 
> 
> Read the tags, I made myself tear up :D

His village was dying.

Magnus wondered what they had done to anger the gods. The summer had been hot and dry and the fields that hadn’t suffered from the drought had been victims to the fires that raged on for days. 

And now the sea had stopped giving them fish.

They were starving - day after day they headed to the sea, and day after day the nets were empty. 

Magnus was standing on a rocky shore a little to the left from the docks that welcomed the defeated fishermen every evening. He didn’t want to be seen.

He wasn’t one to believe old wives' tales, but as they say;

desperate times and all that.

He looked at a small bundle of seaweed - Dead Man’s Fingers - and then he looked back at the sea. The day was sunny but he knew the water to be cold. 

He thought about his family, about the smile his mother wore to hide the worry about their dwindling food supply.

He had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Magnus ate the seaweed, cringing at the saltiness of it. He took off his shoes and shirt, leaving only his trousers on as he started walking to the water.

The waves were strong and threatened to knock him over once they reached his waist. He shivered but braved on, submerging himself and letting the tide move him around. The urge to surface and breathe got strong, but Magnus focused on the hunger he could feel and the next thing he tasted was saltwater, and all he saw was black.

Magnus felt disoriented as he woke up and he was startled to find out that he was underwater. In his shock he sucked in a deep breath, and to his surprise the water that filled his lungs gave him relief instead of suffocation.

The tale had been true.

Magnus looked up and saw the golden light of the sun filter through the water, giving a dimmed version of its glow to the area around him. He was deeper in the sea than he had been when he passed out, the surface several feet above him even as he stood.

He turned around and was startled to find out that he had company.

The man had dark hair and eyes to match, and his arms and upper body were covered in dark marks. Where Magnus was used to seeing legs, the man had a long tail that glimmered in the shades of black and blue.

A merperson.

“What brings you here?” 

“I came to ask for your help,” Magnus said, his voice carrying normally in the water. “My people are dying.”

“Isn’t that fair though?” The man asked, tilting his head. “After what you have done to my people?”

Magnus’ confused expression must have been enough since the creature nodded for Magnus to follow. 

Magnus was a good swimmer but he found it difficult to stay at the pace of the creature. He led Magnus to a bay a decent distance away from their village, a new place where they had broadened their fishing grounds when the usual ones gave no catch. 

Instantly Magnus knew what the merperson had meant.

There in the net, tangled into its loops was another merperson, this one daintier but carrying the same dark marks on their skin. Several others were trying to cut them free, but Magnus could see the strong net cutting into the scales of its tail.

“But we’ve never found any of your people in the nets,” Magnus said. He was more confused than anything.

“We are not meant to exist in the sunlight,” the creature explained. “As the sun hits us our bodies turn to sand. You are left to think that your net was stuck on the bottom of the sea, and we are left to mourn.”

“We are not doing this intentionally,” Magnus said. He didn’t want the creature to think so. “If we stop fishing here, will you bring the fish back?”

The creature looked at Magnus for a long moment, pondering his words with a face that gave away nothing.

“I want to see your words in action before we hold our part of the deal,” he said eventually, and Magnus sighed in relief.

He shook the merperson’s hand with a firm grip. “I promise.”

The creature merely nodded.

“I’ll leave now,” Magnus said. “I promise not to bother you anymore.”

“I don’t mind,” the creature said, smiling for the first time. “If you ever decide to come back here, ask for Alexander.”

As Magnus swam back to the shore, he couldn’t help but think that he’d like to learn more about this mysterious Alexander.

* * *

It quickly became a habit. 

Magnus would find himself at the very same shore with his feet in the water and a bundle of seaweed in his hand. He’d walk further into the water and Alexander would be there, waiting for him when he woke up.

It was after a bad case of pneumonia Magnus had caught after a meeting on a crisp fall day that had prevented him from visiting for four weeks straight, that their meetings started to be at a night time, when Alexander could swim to the shore and Magnus could keep himself dry on a large rock that Alec could lean on.

It was on the day when winter gave the ground the first dusting of white that Magnus asked,

“What will happen when the sea freezes over?”

“Visiting your world has never been a requirement for my people to survive,” Alexander explained. “We’ll be fine under the sea, waiting for spring to warm our waters again.”

“There’s nothing you’re going to miss from up here?” Magnus asked, and he knew he was fishing for a specific answer. 

“I will miss you,” Alexander said, his voice soft as his cold hand took hold of Magnus’ warm one. “But there is nothing we can do.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

* * *

The winter came and the sea had to bend to its will, the top layer of it freezing over and creating a barrier between the two worlds.

The first night when Magnus arrived at their meeting place and was met with a layer of ice that was too strong to break, he felt like he was submerged in the cold water again.

The tears that escaped his eyes felt hot on his skin, but as the cold wind blew it gave no mercy, and soon the lines felt as cold as the ice Magnus was touching with his fingertips.

That winter felt longer than Magnus had ever remembered winter feeling.

* * *

The spring brought new life with it, its light giving a fresh start to nature. Magnus couldn’t help but hope that it would also bring back an old friend.

The night was cold, but instead of watching the moon reflect from the ice, Magnus got to watch it move on the small ripples on the water.

The ice had melted.

The barrier was gone.

Each minute that passed increased Magnus’ excitement, but it also gave time for the worry to grow.

Not for the first time, Magnus wondered if Alexander had survived the winter. He didn’t know much about the dangers that lay under the surface, but he knew that it wasn’t for nothing that Alexander always carried a blade with him. 

Something could have happened.

There was also a possibility that the bone-deep yearning Magnus had felt through the winter had been one-sided, but he refused to believe that. They had talked about many things during their meetings and Magnus liked to think that he’d learnt to know Alexander.

And he was proved right when something broke the calm of the water, and Magnus was greeted by familiar eyes looking up at him.

Alexander’s lips tasted like salt, but it could very well have been from the tears of relief that escaped Magnus’s eyes.

* * *

The people of his village thought that Magnus wasn’t well on the head. After all, it wasn’t usual for someone to sneak out to the shore every night. Magnus never told them the reason for his nightly adventures for fear of what would happen if his people found out about a kingdom under the waters they claimed as theirs.

Magnus told his best friend Catarina.

Catarina told him that Alexander was probably trying to lure him underwater so he could drown him.

* * *

Magnus brought it up once on a summer night, when they were both in shallow water, their upper bodies above it while the rest was under the warm water.

“Could I live in your land?” He asked, his finger tracing the dark marks on Alexander’s skin, his eyes focused on the action rather than whatever he would have seen on Alexander’s face. 

“If I’d come back to the shore to eat that seaweed every time its power ran out, would I be able to live under the water with you?”

“Magnus…”

“I know it’s stupid,” Magnus said, dropping his hand to the water and pulling away a little. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“Don’t be,” Alexander said, taking Magnus’ hand and bringing it up to kiss it. “There’s nothing I would like more, but that’s not a way to live a life.”

“It’s my life,” Magnus said, trying to fight a fight that he knew he’d already lost. “Isn’t it up to me to decide how I want to live it?”

“The power of the seaweed never lasts long,” Alexander explained patiently with a voice that was heavy with sadness. “Is it really living if you have to surface every few hours and drown yourself again? It’s not a lasting solution.”

Magnus knew that, but he had hoped.

“Is there one?” He asked, looking at Alexander again. “A lasting solution I mean?”

“Not that I know of.”

* * *

Most of the people Magnus’ age moved away from their homes and started their own families.

Magnus moved away as well. He had saved up enough money to buy a plot of land from the barren shore near their meeting place, and he built his home there. The house was decorated by beautiful seashells and rocks shaped like hearts, a box of pearls hidden under the bed.

Simple decorations to some but priceless gifts to Magnus. 

People continued to call him crazy.

Cat gently suggested he’d move on.

Magnus never saw that as an option.

* * *

He grew used to the variance of his seasons.

The over-the-moon happiness of spring, summer, and fall, and the crippling sadness that was brought on by winter that isolated him from the one he loved.

But he kept telling himself that as long as he got those nine months of love and joy, he’d brave through the three months of longing.

* * *

The years passed and Magnus noticed that Alexander wasn’t aging the way he himself was.

When he brought it up he learned that the merpeople lived a longer life, that time worked differently for them.

Magnus wished he could have that too, wished he could have more years with Alexander.

* * *

That winter Magnus fell ill.

The sickness was taking a toll on his body, turning it frail. He had no family of his own to take care of him, but the kind people from his village came by to help him.

Magnus heard their whispers, the words confirming what he already read from their pitying faces.

He was dying.

But it was winter, and he couldn’t go without a goodbye to the person who meant the most to him, who’d meant the world to him for decades now.

Only a few more weeks, Magnus prayed from the gods. He only needed a few more weeks.

* * *

That year the spring didn’t give Magnus a feeling of a new life or a new beginning.

It brought an acceptance that this was going to be the end.

Magnus was alone in his home that night, having convinced the kind lady from the house near his to go home for the night, assuring her that he would be fine on his own.

But he hadn’t planned to be on his own. As soon as the sun set he took his cane and started walking to their meeting place. The walk took longer than it used to, and the slippery stones made him nearly fall more than once.

It was determination that carried him to the stone, and he sighed in relief when he finally sat down, his aching feet in the cold water. He didn’t worry about how he was going to get up from there or how he was going to get back to his home. 

He knew his time was running out, had been for a while now. There was no better place for it to end than here, in a place that had brought him the most joy in his life.

Magnus smiled softly when Alexander surfaced a few feet from him and swam forward, pulling himself up from the water enough to greet Magnus with a kiss, his strong arms placed on the stone on both sides of Magnus’ hips.

Magnus kissed back eagerly, greeting his lover with familiarity brought by years.

“Why are you crying?” Alexander asked, instantly concerned.

Magnus hadn’t realized that he had been crying. 

“I’m afraid this will be the end,” Magnus said carefully and watched as Alec lowered himself back to the water, his brows furrowed in confusion before a realization took its place.

“How bad?” Alexander asked, resting a comforting hand on Magnus’ thigh.

“When you go underwater at the end of this night, I won’t be here to watch the sun rise to its fullest height.”

Magnus had never seen Alexander cry before, but it was like Magnus’ quiet words had hit him like a physical punch. His face crumpled and the tears fell and Magnus buried a comforting hand to the wet locks on the top of his head as Alec hid his face in Magnus’ lap, his shoulders shaking with sobs.

Neither of them wanted this to end. Spring was supposed to be the happiest of seasons and it was cruel for it to betray them like this.

They sat there for a while, letting out some of the emotion that felt too large to contain. But Magnus didn’t want the night to be full of sadness.

“Tell me about your winter, will you?” He asked after a while. “Are Jace and Clary still together?”

Their conversation flowed like it always did, and they could almost forget the hourglass they were racing against.

* * *

The whole village mourned Magnus’ death. While he never really made real friends, he was acquaintances with many, and they knew him as the kind and weird old man who loved the sea.

It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that they found his body from the shore as if he was sleeping on the flat stone that the sun had just started to warm up with its rays.

What they didn’t understand though, was why every morning since then, the rock had a new offering from the sea.

A seashell, a beautiful rock rounded by currents, sometimes even a pearl. Small gifts were left to the same stone every morning when it was spring, summer, or fall. The gifts stopped when the ice came, but they started up every year when the sea was free again. 

The same continued on for years until one morning all that could be found was a pile of sand with black and blue scales on it.

There were legends, one more imaginative than the other, about the importance of the stone. Few had guessed that it was a place where two worlds collided, but none understood that during three of the warmest seasons the shore had turned into a world of its own.

The world that had crumpled on the first day of spring all those years ago, and that’s memories had now disappeared with its last resident.

A time would come when the shore would see a new person desperate enough to believe an old wives' tale, and someone new would fall victim to the unfairness of seasons and time.

Their only hope was that somewhere, beyond these worlds and fragile bodies, there might be a world with no barriers separating them.

**Author's Note:**

> This is quite different from the things I usually write so I'd love to hear your thoughts!!
> 
> You can also find me from [tumblr](https://sugarandspace.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/sugarandspace_)!


End file.
